I went to see it last night with my daughter and her friend.
It is around 30 years since I read any of the books, and so I went in just to see an adventure and to take it at face value.
We all enjoyed it. I liked the nice little touch shown as the ship went through the icy southern waters the poor sod risking frostbite in delicate areas as he relieved himself off the bows! This lead to thoughts of the stench while they were becalmed, to say nothing of the even higher risk of disease, if that were not already high enough, given conditions on ships at the time.

I think the girls enjoyed it. Mine is hoping to do English lit with film and tv studies (or media) at uni next year. Her friend has applied to drama school. This shows in the way they react to films. My lass will show a greater interest in continuity, special effects and the like, as well as the dialogue, whereas her friend will extract pieces of dialogue she likes and play around with them, before anything else. (Ruth says she is expecting the text messages she receives in the near future to be full of naval jargon).

On the continuity/music - did anyone notice the final duet, where Aubrey ceases strumming his fiddle and starts bowing...and for a few seconds, while he is picking up his bow, the fiddle strumming continues alongside that of the cello? We were already primed on this one as Ruth had heard about it. (Nothing to do with her actually being a fiddler herself!)

As we were sad enough to sit through the credits, we noticed that WETA in New Zealand worked on some of the special CGI effects.

One of the ships (Grand Turk) used in the Hornblower films was on show at Whitby this year, and although it has been built to a slightly larger scale between decks to accommodate the increased average height these days, it did give quite a good indication of the lack of space on these vessels. The captain's cabin was very similar to that of the Surprise, but it wasn't in such close proximity to the gundeck that all you had to do was remove a partition! I remember the rudder mechanism running through it, so I understood what the officers were looking at when they toasted the change of course.
Les will be able to say more about the Turk, perhaps.

I think my one abiding memory of the first of the books I read was the description of the terrible injuries sustained in battle, not so much from shot as from flying splinters.

Andrea